


into the woods

by Kylierey93



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Good bro Sam Wilson, M/M, POV Sam Wilson, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, hanging out in wakanda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-06-07 13:24:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6806689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kylierey93/pseuds/Kylierey93
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Deny it all you want, Cap,” says Sam, grinning. “Don’t worry, you’re still my favorite geriatric super soldier, even though now I know <em>two</em>. Don’t look at me like that, Barnes, you’ve tried to kill me on two separate occasions. <em>You ripped out my wing</em>.”</p>
<p>Steve looks pained. Barnes gives Sam his best dead-eyed look, which is actually pretty impressive. And then something sparks in Bucky’s eyes, and he says, “I’d say I’m pretty <em>disarming</em> now.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	into the woods

**Author's Note:**

> this is my valiant attempt at coping, and kind of haphazard, but i needed to get this out of my system

Look, Sam’s not necessarily complaining, but he really wishes Wakanda had a Starbucks. T’Challa can preach and rave about Wakanda being the most technologically advanced nation in the world, which is all well and good, but Sam just wants his mainstream cup of coffee, please and thanks.

T’Challa, saint and King and all around awesome dude, has set them up in the lower floors of his mansion. It’s not exactly Avengers Mansion, per say, but it’s large enough where there haven’t been any cat fights (ha) and everyone’s got a decent amount of space to have private heart to hearts or whatever. If Sam’s caught Steve leaving Bucky’s room looking a little red-eyed more than once now, hey, he isn’t gonna be the first to say something about it.

The point is, it’s better than the four-by-four cell he’d been sitting pretty in last week, better than the gruel that prison had been admirably claiming to be food. He’s glad to see Wanda laughing if anything, watching Scott get his ass handed to him at darts, when she’d been tucked away in a straight jacket not three days ago. (“This is _way_ better than my last prison break!” Scott had said cheerfully after Steve had busted them all out. Sam wouldn't wish the look on Steve's face when he'd seen Wanda on his worst enemy.)

“Going to that coffee shop that I can’t pronounce, anyone want anything?” Sam calls out to the resident Avengers lounging about the common area. Or...are they even Avengers anymore? Does going to a super secret supervillain prison in the middle of the ocean disqualify your Avenger status? That's a headache Sam's not quite ready to analyze, just yet. Clint lifts the cup of coffee he brewed himself that he’s bravely dedicated to drinking, even though it sucks, and Wanda and Scott call out their orders. Steve pointedly clears his throat from his place on the couch.

“Bucky, why don’t you go with Sam?” Steve asks. Bucky grunts. He and Wanda are locked in some kind of intricate game of Wakandan chess that both of them have become obsessed with. Sam glares at Steve and does his best to communicate  _Stop what you are doing_ with his face.

_He needs to get out of the mansion_ , says Steve with his eyebrows.

_Then take him yourself_ , communicates Sam.

_You’re already going_ , Captain America’s best Pouty Face says.

Sam wishes he could say no to Captain America, he really does. His life would be so much simpler. Maybe he’d be living on a beach somewhere, drinking martinis and not getting involved in superhero drama. But he’s seen Steve misty eyed about twenty-three times in the last three minutes, and it’s basically a crime against America to say no to Steve’s puppy eyes.

Damn it.

“C’mon, Barnes, you can help me carry the tray,” Sam says, trying to sound peppy about it.

It takes Bucky a few seconds to seem to be aware that he’s been addressed. The look Barnes levels on him is straight up creepy. Barnes hasn’t quite mastered facial expressions just yet, so his default is a blank stare, and Sam’s yet to get used to seeing such a lack of emotion on another person's face. Sam has caught him testing out expressions several times, like it takes actual effort to school his face into something resembling a human being.

“Yeah, ok,” says Bucky, rising to his feet. He sways for a second, balance off due to the whole arm-blasted-off thing, and Sam decidedly does not glance at Steve to see the heartbreaking expression in Captain America’s sad puppy dog eyes. 

“I win by default,” says Wanda. A second too late, Bucky forces his face into a poor man’s scowl.

“Ain’t done. I’ll be back,” he says, and Wanda hums. Steve watches them, misty eyed. Sam wonders how he ended up here, in the midst of this.

The absolute tragedy of it is this: Bucky Barnes will never be Bucky Barnes again. He’s broken up into three entirely different pieces, each too jagged and crooked to fit back together. Steve Rogers has never faced an obstacle that he couldn’t bulldoze his way through, be it stubbornly or righteously or a godawful combination of the two, and the first thing Steve can’t steamroll just so happens to share his best friend’s face, and the only piece of his past self left in the world.

Novels could be dedicated to the tragedy of Steven Grant Rogers' life, is the thing.

Barnes disappears into the hallway and returns some minutes later with his hoodie on. Sam doesn’t want to think about Bucky struggling into it, one-handed, alone in his room. Barnes’ eyes dart over to Steve, then away just as quickly before Steve’s face has had the time to properly brighten up. Sam can’t blame him. It’s like looking at the goddamn sun.

The coffee shop isn’t too far. They walk in silence, Bucky’s shoulders hunched up and his head ducked. Sam takes the time to marvel at the great stone panthers towering above their heads, impressive and terrifying in all their glory. “Give a guy a motif,” he says, mostly to fill the silence.

Barnes snorts. “You literally dress up as a bird.”

“Jealousy doesn’t suit you, asshole. I can _fly_."

Bucky’s lips quirk up. “Watch out for windows.”

“Okay, one: I am far too skilled and graceful and just generally overall awesome to ever fly into a window. And two: fuck you.”

Any response Barnes may have had dies as they enter the coffee shop. His whole body stiffens, back going ramrod straight, smirk sliding away into that creepy emotionless, dead-eyed look. This is unfamiliar territory, Sam realizes, and he pauses in the doorway, gives Bucky a moment to scout out the exits, the possible threats. The seconds feel like minutes, but finally, Bucky’s body loosens by fractions. The fingers of his right hand unclench, his shoulders loosen, and finally, at last, Bucky blinks over at Sam.

“Aren’t you gonna order,” he deadpans.

Sam blinks. “Didn’t know you were in a rush.”

“I got plans,” says Barnes. “Got a nap scheduled for ten.”

Sam snorts and turns to the counter. He gets them both a cake pop, just ‘cause.

***

Sam jolts upwards. For half a second he has the peace of mind to be unaware of what’s woken him, even though it’s happened a million times and it’ll happen a million times more. And then that familiar noise: the raw, animalistic screaming of the Winter Soldier from down the hall.

Sam’s surprised the sound hasn’t entered his nightmares, just yet, but he has enough demons for now without sharing some with Bucky Barnes. It’s a terrible sound; one of a man who’s suffered seventy years of torture, one of a man who may never be free of them.

The established routine is clear, and Sam isn’t quite ready to deviate from it, just yet. He rises, makes it halfway across his room before Steve’s door, right across from Sam’s, bangs open. Steve, face painfully open in the wee hours of the morning, locks eyes with Sam and then hurriedly turns away before Sam can see the degree to which Steve’s heartbreak goes. When he looks back up at Sam, all that raw emotion has been carefully tucked away out of sight.

Steve crosses the hall and slips into Bucky’s room quietly. In the half-second that the door is open Barnes’ screams echo viciously down the hall, made more terrible by the stillness of night. And then Steve shuts the door softly behind him, and for twelve seconds (sometimes longer, sometimes less) Sam waits with his heart in his throat.

Will it be this time? Will the Winter Soldier wake, Bucky Barnes shut away behind some locked door in his mind?

Always, the screams shudder and stop. Sometimes Sam hears sobs. Sometimes Sam hears nothing at all.

Every time Steve doesn’t reemerge until the morning.

He’d peeked in, once, in the earliest hours before even Steve had risen for his godawful run. The two super soldiers had been plastered up against each other in such a indiscernible tangle of limbs that they’d been one body, one being. Sam would say the two are prime candidates for a study on codependency, but he has enough self-awareness to know that'd be a little hypocritical. In another life, it may have been funny: these two two-hundred-plus pounds men, Bucky’s hair half in Steve’s mouth, Steve’s leg thrown haphazardly over Bucky’s waist, drool on the pillows. But it wasn’t funny, not really.

Wanda, Clint, and Scott are kind enough not to mention the nightmares, or the screams, though they each share a pointed look over breakfast. This is their routine: an acknowledgment of the horror, and then nothing.

“Is Captain America always so….” whispers Scott at the table as Steve’s bent over the oven, trying valiantly to assemble some kind of secret apple pie his mother used to make that Bucky, supposedly, used to love. This remains to be seen: Bucky'd shrugged carelessly when Steve had brought it up, and ever since Steve's been devoted to the idea like it's the last breath of air in the ocean.

“Idiotic? Self-sacrificing? Dramatic?” supplies Sam.

“Patriotic? Long-winded?” offers Clint. Wanda watches, a tilt of amusement at the corner of her lips.

Scott’s mouth opens, shuts, opens. “Captain America-y?” he finishes lamely.

“No,” says Sam, loud enough where he knows Steve can hear. “He’s _worse_.”

And Barnes _snorts_.

The sky opens up. Rays of light shine down on Bucky's tragic little face. Steve looks as if he was getting ready to make some snarky retort, but Bucky’s amusement derails him for the briefest moment. Long enough for Sam to say, “Listen, you should’ve seen him a couple of months ago in Hungary. He gave a  _speech_  to the bad guys. About _freedom_. ‘Truth, justice, and the American way’ is an actual quote, I’m not lying. Wanda can confirm.”

It turns out apple pie is not the way to Barnes’ heart: it's insulting Steve Rogers. He looks like Christmas has come too soon. “That is not true,” says Steve all defensively, squaring up his shoulders and wielding a whisk in Sam’s direction. He looks about as intimidating as a golden retriever, and he has a bit of flour on his cheek. Wanda giggles. A sharp well of affection surges in Sam’s chest, not just for Steve, for all of them: this ragtag group of messed up, PTSD-having superheroes that have somehow become his family.

“Deny it all you want, Cap,” says Sam, grinning. “Don’t worry, you’re still my favorite geriatric super soldier, even though now I know _two_. Don’t look at me like that, Barnes, you’ve tried to kill me on two separate occasions. _You ripped out my wing_.”

Steve looks pained. Barnes gives Sam his best dead-eyed look, which is actually pretty impressive. And then something sparks in Bucky’s eyes, and he says, “I’d say I’m pretty  _disarming_  now.”

There’s silence. Scott’s eyes are wide. A slow grin is spreading on Clint’s face. Steve’s expression flits through about a million phases: horror, anguish, back to horror, and then finally settles on frustration. “ _God_ , Buck, you did _not_ —”

“I  _cannot_  believe you went there,” says Sam with the utmost glee. Bucky looks supremely satisfied with himself. Steve sputters for a few more seconds and then gives up completely, turning back to his pie so he can hide his grin.

“Personally,” says Clint with deadpan sincerity, “I feel safer now that you’re  _unarmed_.”

Steve sighs. “I should’ve left you all in prison.”

Scott says, “Did someone remember to record Dancing With The Stars?” and Clint nails him with a piece of candy.

***

All good things must come to an end. Sam supposes he shouldn’t be surprised that the feel good party doesn’t last too long, 'cause that'd be totally, what's the word, _happy_? Bucky corners him in his room that night (and by corners Sam means he steps out of the shadows like a goddamn vampire, and Sam does not jump, no sir). After his heart has returned to an acceptable rhythm, Sam says, “You asshole, was that necessary?”

“I was gonna let him kill me,” says Barnes, because he _is_ an asshole, and he apparently can’t have a single conversation without breaking Sam’s goddamn heart.

“Bucky, if you think Steve was going to kill you on those helicarriers then you really—”

“Not. Not on the helicarriers.” Bucky stops for a full twenty seconds, and Sam waits him out patiently. “In Siberia. In the facility. I thought. When he saw what’d I done, I thought he’d. Decide I wasn’t worth it. And. I would've let him.”

Sam’s heart promptly shatters into a million little pieces all over the carpet. Bucky’s staring at a speck of dirt on the wall fixedly, like he’s scared to find some kind of confirmation or condemnation in Sam’s eyes. Barnes will live the rest of his life waiting for what little he has left to stab him in the back, and Sam wishes he could change that, somehow. Barnes needs about a million years of therapy, but he knows that that's not an option, at least not for now.

“Barnes. We do know the same Steve, right? Stubborn little asshole, heart too big for his chest?” Barnes snorts. “All of us here, we know it wasn’t your fault. We’ve got your back, ok?”

Bucky nods seriously, like Sam has just told him the secrets of the Universe instead of what, Sam considers, is a very obvious fact. “Ok,” he says, then: “I want to go back into cryo.”

Sam blinks at the man sitting opposite him, and takes a moment to compose himself before he blurts out something unhelpful. He thinks of Steve, when Sam had asked what made of happy, smiling ruefully and saying _I don't know._ He thinks of Steve, smiling sincerely the most that Sam's ever seen him. Bucky’s looking at him all earnestly, like he genuinely thinks Sam’s gonna supply him with some kind of earth shattering wisdom. Instead, Sam says slowly, “Can you tell me why?”

Bucky huffs out a breath, annoyed. He fixates on the lamp by Sam’s bed. He’s not so good with eye contact, but that’s ok. “There’s. A book. With words that turn me into a killing machine. It isn’t safe. For me, or others.” Barnes pinches the bridge of his nose. “And Steve—he doesn’t. Deserve this. To be stuck here, hiding with me. None of you do.”

Sam fights back the urge to give the dude a hug. He doesn’t think it’d be well received. “Look, man. Steve would fall on a knife for you. He’ll do anything you want to do.”

“I  _know_ ,” growls Bucky, “that’s the  _problem_.”

He thinks of Bucky, scared shitless in a coffee shop. Of Bucky, waiting for everything good in his life to turn around and give up on him. 

“You seem like you have your mind made up. If this is something you want, then I’ll back you. If you’re only doing this because—”

“I don’t want to go under forever," Barnes interrupts. "Just…until they can unscramble my brain.”

“You want this?” asks Sam, just to be sure.

“I’m tired,” Bucky answers simply. And Sam can feel it, a bone-deep weariness in the other man who can’t even find solace in sleep. Sam understands.

“Ok. Ok. But I’m not telling Steve for you, if that’s what you want.” Bucky glares at him. “No way, asshole. You have to face that. I cannot  _believe_  I somehow got stuck with two ninety year-old emotionally constipated super soldiers. I am not facing Captain America's sad puppy dog eyes for you, or for anybody, for that matter.”

"But they're the _worst,"_ says Bucky, looking distinctly unimpressed by this turn in events. "He looks like you personally ran over his favorite stray kitten."

It's one thing they can agree on.

***

Barnes goes back in the ice three days later. Sam corners Steve a couple hours after. He’s stone-faced, shoulders stiff, eyes a little red rimmed. Steve turns and gives Sam a heroic attempt at a smile, because, again, emotional constipation. “You ok, man?”

“Fine,” says the biggest Idiot, capital letter and all, Sam has ever known.

_Just bleed on me for once, man, I can take it_ , he wants to say, but it doesn’t seem to be the time. Instead, Sam tries out his best Guilt Trip look that he’d learned from his mama. Steve ducks his head, rubbing at the back of his neck. Mission accomplished.

“It won’t be long. It’ll be ok, man. It's all uphill from here.” He wishes he could provide something substantial, give a little more reassurance, but it’s all Sam’s got for now. He’s tired and the last few days have been hell, and he still can’t sleep without watching Rhodey plummet to the earth just out of his reach, Rhodey’s face morphing into Riley’s and then back again, over and over and over.

Steve just smiles, that patented Sad-At-The-Corners-But-Still-Trying Steve Rogers smile, and says, “I know.”


End file.
